Rives Talks About the Creation of the Museum of Four in the Morning

Rives is a poet and storyteller who once did a TED Talk where he spoke about what he called "the 4 am mystery" – as for years, he had been picking up on pop cultural and literary references to this time of day. In his most recent TED Talk, he talks about how this curiosity became a hobby.

After TED.com launched and his 4 am Mystery TED Talk was published on it, Rives began receiving emails and information from all over the world, with people sending him references to 4 am they themselves had seen – from the obscure to the popular. He eventually created the Museum of Four in the Morning, an online resource that compiled all of these references and citations.

At the end of the endearing TED Talk, Rives circles back to a poignant Tweet he received about the "Museum", which said "it sounds like an ancient mix tape." The Tweet ended up being from an old college girlfriend, who had made him (and was referencing) a mix tape, in which she paired each song with poems that could be found in the U.S. Library of Congress. Rives listened to the old tape again, and one of the songs on it was Paul Simon's 'Peace Like a River,'; "oh four in the morning, I woke up from out of my dream..."